Posted: June 4, 2021
The Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology welcomes new postdoctoral scholar, Suraj Kar, who joined the Rosa lab last month.
Suraj Kar
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology welcomes new postdoctoral scholar, Suraj Kar, who joined the Rosa lab last month.
Kar’s current research focuses on understanding the physiological response of grapevines to infestation of Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula), a phloem-feeding invasive insect pest newly discovered in the United States.
He holds a doctorate in agro-ecosystem science from Hokkaido University, earned a master’s degree in agronomy from ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, and has a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from Visva Bharati University. After completing his doctorate, Kar was a postdoctoral fellow at the Texas Tech University.
As part of his doctoral research, Kar identified selection techniques and improved genotypes of interspecific and intergeneric hybrids of Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) under cool subtropical and warm temperate climates, using combined photosynthetic and chlorophyll fluorescence assay. While doing his postdoctoral fellowship at the Texas Tech University, he developed a rapid and accurate field scale technique to identify leaf-level drought stress tolerance in grapevines and woody perennials by observing the periodic decay in carbon assimilation in excised leaves. He has also worked on developing a novel solution to the persistent problem of off-target drift of synthetic auxin herbicides in vineyards in West Texas.
